The success of a company is defined by the owners.
Some companies make a decent living for their owners but their revenues remain relatively small. The owners are happy with the business and so by their definition they have a successful business.
Other companies have a goal of being number one in a market, their focus is on revenue growth.
From a value perspective a successful company is one that makes high returns for its owners.
Company Size And Value
Using value as the metric of success can determine how big a company you need to build. Consider a company with outside investment of $60M. Assume that this $60M has purchased 40% of the company. If the investors are hoping to make ten times their investment then the value of their share of the company will need to be $600M when they sell their shares. If this is 40% of the ownership then the total value of the company must be $1500M. Now if the valuation of the company is expected to be two times revenue we can see that the business will have to have annual revenue of $750M if it is to reap the expected return for the outside investors.
